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Solutions and Services: Providing Professional Solutions For Your Business or Personal Future Online. Tips Page: To make your internet experience more rewarding and productive. Tips for rookies and professionals dealing with web design, web site construction, web hosting, email, submission and much more. *********************************************** Tip 1: Fix Internet
extensions in the
Registry Tip 2: Domain Names: from Christianet.com: Prior to 1999, Internic which is now called Network Solutions, was the company that registered domain names for Internet organizations. These domain names or URLs were allowed to be 23 characters or less. Now a new group of companies are selling domain names up to 67 characters for the web name and many new extensions are available other than the traditional .com, .net, .org and .edu. Is there any value in purchasing the new 67 character domain names and placing keyword rich words in the domain name in the hope of higher search engine rankings? Some people are suggesting for example that if you own a music company that you purchase a domain name such as musicsonglyricsheetsingmp3midi.com which contains many of the keywords associated with music. Even though a few search engines could possibly rank this domain highly, it is very unlikely over the long term due to the following: First, many of the search engines are now using human intervention to rank a Web site and they will not be fooled by the long domain name. Second, a long domain name is next to impossible to use for your marketing and branding campaign due the unrecognizable name. Third, if the search engines get too many long domain names being placed into their sites that don’t make sense, they could limit domain names to the shorter 23 character length. So how does one properly use the 23 character domain names to achieve higher rankings in the search engines? Bottomline, obtain domain names that are keyword sensitive. For example if you sell Christian Art, christianart.com would contain the keywords Christian and Art. Therefore when someone types either the words Christian or Art your web site has a much higher probability of ranking high in the search engines. Keep in mind receiving a higher ranking will also depend on the proper layout of the web page and its tags. Please read prior articles below for those techniques. (TOP) ********************************************** Tip 3: Link Command: Provided by Christianet.com: Wouldn’t it be nice if you could determine every Web site that has a link into your Web site. Even better, determine every Web site linked into your competitors home page? You can do this and more by using the link command at both Infoseek and Altavista. Simply type into the search engine box the word link: and then type your URL as one word and these two search engines will bring back a list of Web sites that have a link into the Web page. For example, type link: http://www.christianet.com into one of these search engines and you can see the different Web sites that have linked into ChristiaNet’s home page. How can the link command be helpful to a savvy Web entrepreneur? First, you can determine what type of people and sites are finding your Web site valuable. This information will allow you to market even harder to this group of people and increase your revenues. Second, you may find a new group of people to sell your product or service that never crossed your mind. Third, you can discover what type of prospect finds your competitors Web site useful. Bottom line - new leads. (TOP) ******************************************** Tip 4: Web Page Design: Provided by Christianet.com: First, it depends on the objective of the business or ministry. If the site is to generate a response or even better a sales lead, then fewer Web pages are usually the preferred option. One of the major aims of the site should be to generate a sales lead that can be called and then sold over the telephone. The Internet site acts as an effective lead generator and the marketing department closes the sale. Therefore, its not the number of Web pages that generates sales leads, but prospects filling out an Interactive Marketing Form. What is an Interactive Marketing Form? This is a form that prospects fill out on a Web site including their name, address, telephone and what types of items they would like to purchase. Next, the prospect clicks on the send icon and this information is sent to you via e-mail. At last, an Internet lead! In other words, its not the quantity of Web pages that makes more sales, but having an accessible Interactive Marketing Form. In most cases, your business or ministry only needs to have an Interactive Marketing Form with a short paragraph explaining your products or services. Bottom line - only one Web page. This saves your organization both time and money, and in many cases produces even more leads because of the easily accessible form. (TOP) ****************************************** Tip 5: Effective Advertising: Provided by Christianet.com: There are thousands of Web sites that offer Internet advertising. How does a business or ministry know where to market to receive the most value? First, you must ask what types of activities are producing the hits. Are the hits of commercial value or are they chat rooms, articles, games, Web page updates or even free links? In other words, why are visitors coming to that Web site? Of course, if you are selling a product or service, the most valuable visitor is one who is coming to the site to buy products and services. Obviously, you want commercial visitors interested in buying your products. However, on many Web sites, over 90% of the hits are coming from chat rooms, articles, games, free Web pages and free links. In a chat room, each time somebody pushes the enter key, a hit is counted for the Web site. On free Web page sites, each time someone updates their site or sends somebody to view it, hits are registered. If a site offers thousands of free links, visitors are usually there to place a free link for their business or ministry -- not to buy from another free link listed. In other words, one must consider the commercial quality of the hits on a site, not just the quantity of hits. Second, you need to know how many hits a site receives in relation to the number of links on the site. This is important information, because if there are too many competing links to attract a visitor’s attention, your Web site has a lesser chance of being viewed. If a site receives ten million hits per month and has twenty thousand free links, the site has 500 hits per link. On the other hand, if a site has four hundred links for two million hits per month, the site has 5,000 hits per link. The bottom line: -The smaller site offers ten times the probability of your Web site being clicked on. A commercial Web site that receives the same number of hits as a non-commercial site may be one hundred times more effective for an advertiser. This can mean the difference between a successful or an unsuccessful marketing campaign. (TOP) ***************************************** Tip 6: Search Engine Submissions: Provided by Christianet.com: Yahoo Submissions: It is estimated that over 500 search engines exist on the Internet, according to Internet advertisements. Even though there are hundreds of search engines, only the major six are significant because they account for eighty percent of all search engine hits. The largest of these six major search engines is Yahoo! Most people will use Yahoo! as one of their stops to search the Net, so it is important to know how to use it as a major tool in advertising your company’s products and services. Yahoo! is organized as a meta-index, unlike all other major and minor search engines. For example, if an end-user does a search in Yahoo on "European Travel", they are likely to come up with search results related to traveling in Europe. On the other hand, other search engines may pull up search results that contains the words "European," or "travel," whether it is related to travel or not. Using Yahoo!, the end-user is more likely to come up with valid search results, and not bad links, non-functional or under-construction Web pages, or unprofessional sites. When submitting your Web site to Yahoo!, it is important to follow Yahoo!’s instructions exactly. While other search engines use only a computer to accept Web site submissions, Yahoo! is staffed by editors who hand-check each submission. An estimated 75% of all submissions are rejected, and it can take six weeks or longer to hear from Yahoo! whether your Web site was posted or rejected. In fact, you may or may not be notified of an acceptance or rejection. For $199, you can purchase a "Business Express" to guarantee that your Web site will be reviewed and considered (does not guarantee acceptance) within seven business days. You will also receive an e-mail response telling why your entry was accepted or declined. Some do’s and don’ts of registering with Yahoo! are as follows: Follow the instructions carefully to submit your URL; Select the category in which your URL belongs, not the category you would necessarily like; Only submit your home page. Yahoo! rarely accepts more than one URL per Web site; Make sure that your site is not under construction and that all the links work; Your site should offer "online transactions" over the Internet, and your business should be based in the United States; and finally Yahoo! rarely accepts URLs from the major sites known for offering free Web pages. Hotbot Submissions: Only submit to Hotbot a few keywords per page. Focus on a few keywords that are important for your Web page to be found. Concentrate on submitting the name of your business and one other keyword. If your name is "XYZ Travel Company," use the name "XYZ Travel Company" on your Web page. Additionally, if your keyword is "Mexico Travel," list the keyword several times on your Web page. In the text of your Web page, you will need to repeat your keywords 2 to 5 times. If you repeat them too often, Hotbot can start deducting points. Place your keyword in the title, description, and keyword META tags. The URL and the keyword that you submit to Hotbot should contain the same name. For example, if you submit "Y2K Solutions" as a keyword, then the URL should also contain the name "Y2K Solutions." Additionally, the link name "Y2K Solutions" must be listed somewhere on your Web page and should match the name of the URL and keyword (don’t call the link name "Y2K Food," for example). General Internet Submission Tips: The six major search engines on the Internet are Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo. The major search engines account for eighty percent of all search engine hits to most Web sites. Therefore, focusing on optimizing your Web page position with these major six can be well worth the investment; Professional search engine registration companies can offer registration to thousands of search engines and directories for a fee. However, since the major six search engines account for 80% of all search engine hits, it may be better worth your time to concentrate on these six. Register each individual Web page only one time per search engine. Registering a page multiple times may be considered spamming by some of the search engines, and your Web site could be removed from the search engine; Submit at most five URLs per day to a search engine. For some of the search engines, registering more than five is considered spamming, and your entries could be disregarded. Become familiar with each search engine’s rules by reading the entry instructions prior to submitting your Web page; Excite typically accepts only twenty-five Web pages per domain name. Once you’ve registered your choice twenty-five pages, do not register additional pages. Otherwise, your choice twenty-five pages could be replaced. On the other hand, even if you register only your choice twenty-five pages, Excite’s robot spider may automatically register other pages you may not want. Therefore, some or all of your original twenty-five pages could be replaced. The point is this: You may not be able to control which Web pages Excite chooses. Don’t pull your hair out if you see different pages registered from month to month. New Directory Submissions: Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and LookSmart (looksmart.com) are directories that now "feed" several of the major search engines. The directories are divided into major categories, such as "Autos," "Business," "Careers," etc.. When a consumer enters a search criteria, for example, "Christian Jobs", it used to be that the search engine would search for Web pages that were related to Christian jobs. Now, however, drawing information from these two new directories, some of the search engines default to searching according to categories, not Web pages. The reason for this major change? Possibly the major search engines are copying Yahoo’s successful format, which has always searched according to category first, not Web pages. Since the major search engines are beginning to search according to categories first and not Web pages, Web page only submissions will cause your site to lose potential hits. Be sure to register your Web page with both Open Directory Project and LookSmart, and use the following tips to maximize your position: Carefully choose the category which is most closely related to your Web site’s contents, NOT necessarily where you would prefer to be listed. These are human-handled directories; submissions are not automatically posted. For example, Open Directory Project uses 90,000 editors to determine whether your Web page will be placed in their directory or not. If you do not submit your Web page carefully, they may ignore your entry. In addition, register soon, as it can take an average of 1-2 months to be listed. (TOP) ********************************** Tip 7: E-Mail Lists: Provided by Christianet.com: Utilizing an E-Mail distribution list is a great way to market your products and services to a target audience. You can begin building your own E-Mail list by saving E-Mails during everyday transactions. For example, save the E-Mails from any correspondence you receive to your Web site or from prospects who fill out your Web site's interactive form. When you sell a product or service, ask for the client's E-Mail address. Your list will grow with diligence and time. If you don't have time to build your own list, you can usually find someone within your industry who has an E-Mail list built up for your target market. Often, they will allow you to sponsor an ad space either at the top or bottom of their E-Mail message. The price can run from fifty dollars to several thousands of dollars, depending on the target marketing and the size of the list. Other companies rent E-Mail lists called opt-in E-Mail lists: these companies will send out E-Mails for you. The advantage is that they can specifically target prospects within your industry. This service can run as high as twenty cents per E-Mail, whereas newsletter E-Mails can be as low as a penny. Being mindful of E-Mail etiquette can go a long way in building good relationships with your prospects. For example, only give out your E-Mail distribution list if you have your user's permission. After all, they signed up to be on your list, not necessarily another's. However, if you do have the go-ahead from your users, you may want to consider swapping E-Mail lists with a competitor. This can be a great way to drum up fresh leads. A year or two ago, the practice of sending a one-time E-Mail solicitation asking permission to place the prospect on an E-Mail list was widely accepted. Today this practice is not as accepted. Most people do not want an unsolicited E-Mail, no matter its content. It is best to steer away from anything that could bother potential future clients. (TOP) *************************************** Tip 8: Computer viruses will continue to come in waves Chaim Yudkowsky "I love you." This universal expression of substantive fondness that one human may have for another now has a completely different meaning for many of us. The billions of dollars of damage in the form of wasted time and system damage and the mistrust of e-mail and computer reliability were just some of the fallout of this lightening attack on computer networks worldwide. Now that most of us have recovered, we must debrief ourselves to examine the lessons of this modern day love bug. The vast infection of the systems of disparate organizations demands a better understanding of how to better prepare defenses against similar future attacks and procedures for adequately responding to those that may slip through the cracks. They will not end. Even if the developers and spreaders of this attack are caught and punished, the likelihood of ever increasing frequency and ferocity of attacks and the speed of their effect will not end. After Melissa last year, we believed that we were prepared. The evil intent or simple interest to test the limits of "their own ingenuity" assure that virus designers will remain tempted to carry on. Thus, in some respects and despite its impact, the ILOVEYOU virus is still analogous to a trashcan fire preparing for the possibility of a building-engulfing fire. Rules are not changing behaviors. Curiosity still rules. Scary as it sounds, even machines at the Pentagon and the CIA, considered the paragons of national security paranoia (rightfully so), were infected. Rules alone are not changing behaviors. In fact, despite the ILOVEYOU virus, I am certain that a foreign and unknown "joke" attachment was opened today on a least one machine in most of your businesses. Auditing and enforcing behavior relating to "safe computing" is not enough. Consider combining filters and other software with ongoing user education to get the message across. Even with a daily reminder, folks are still going to be tempted to open the right message addressed to them regardless unless they know better. Common sense, common sense. Even knowing better is not always the answer. When early the fateful first morning of the attack I got a message from a vendor saying ILOVEYOU, I knew something was wrong. First, though I pay his bills on time, I know he does not "love" me. Second, I try to encourage a no-junk-mail policy to friends and colleagues, thereby rarely receiving humorous attachments. So it stood out. Talking to those that opened the attachment, the theme has usually been an admitted "I should have known better." Instead, getting an ILOVEYOU message was assumed to be a joke or game. One consulted "expert" recommended the nonsensical solution of not opening or deleting the ILOVEYOU message. Because many traditional media types, especially local folks, do not generally fully understand the technical side of technology, they are useful in informing the public that there is a problem, but not reliable in describing a substantive solution. The risks of standardization. In this latest attack, users of Netscape were not affected if Microsoft Outlook was not installed. Microsoft products continue to be popular focuses of virus attack because of market share. The thinking is if "I want to be successful in my virus intent, I must go for the market share." By embracing the market leaders' products, we must be careful to be especially sensitive to the perils of a zealous virus designer who may focus on that market share. Know thine antivirus vendor. As a user of the powerful enterprise focused Panda Software (pandasoftware.com), I was impressed by the difference of response of my vendor and others. The traffic jam on McAfee's and Symantec's Web sites lasted for a few days and downloading their fixes took patience. Panda, on the other hand, not only sends me e-mail almost daily to keep me informed about the world of risk, but they on this occasion e-mailed me early about the problem -- then that afternoon e-mailed me the solution as a registered user. Behave responsibly if it happens to you. Once the Love Bug infiltrated your e-mail system, how long did it take you to stop infecting others? Did more than one user send the virus to more than one external e-mail address more than one time? How about internally? In many cases, the answer was yes. The justification, despite infection and not understanding the nature of the infection, was that the e-mail system is critical to the business "as a service to their public." Therefore, the problem was perpetuated by staying up and connected until solved. Could another attack like the "ILOVEYOU" virus happen again? Sure. Still, I hope with the lessons of this virus, the only Love Bug that we hear of is a remake of that old Love Bug -- "Herbie." (Editor's note: This column was written before the second, more virulent round of the "ILOVEYOU" virus hit last week.) Chaim Yudkowsky is chief information officer at Textilease Corp., a uniform and first aid services company serving the Southeast. He may be reached at 301-937-4555 or cyudkowsky@byteofsuccess.com. Join our discussion group at byteofsuccess@egroups.com. (TOP)
**************************** Domain Name Selection: Is the Domain Name you want
already taken by some one else? Let's say the domain you wanted
was flowers.com because you own a florist store by the name of "Harry's
Flower Shop". flowers.com is already taken and so is harrysflowers.com.
Have you thought about using your phone number or 800 number? 18007775555.com. What about different products or services you offer? Don't forget about .net and .org This should give you a few ideas
to try out.
Return to Domain Registration: (TOP of Tips Page) Tip 10: From CNET Web Services: The ability of Web builders to employ cookies has been severely hampered by a torrent of bad press, wild rumors, and half-truths. The technology got a bad rap from the beginning. At heart, cookies are nothing more than electronic Post-It notes for Web servers, but they attracted the attention of conspiracy theorists and neosurvivalists who concocted a barrage of stories about all the horrible things cookies could allegedly do. People claimed that any random site could read the cookies on a user's hard disk, that cookies could be used to steal information from hard disks, and that cookies posed various other threats to users' privacy and security. Most--if not all--of these claims were patently false. For instance, a cookie can be read only by the site domain that created it, and can store only information supplied by the site or by the user. There is no way a cookie can rifle through the contents of the user's hard drive, nor can it haphazardly broadcast the client's private data across the Internet. Word is slowly spreading that cookies aren't the poison pellets they've been made out to be. In fact, the cookie controversy might have faded by now, except that at least one banner advertising network has used cookies to track users' Web activities in a manner that many people find objectionable. The DoubleClick Network attempts to develop customer profiles and present those users with banner ads targeted toward their interests. Each time a visitor connects to a DoubleClick site, the DoubleClick server reads and/or writes a cookie to their hard disk, in the process compiling extensive data about the user's activities on those sites. DoubleClick is quick to point out that it does not gather or store usernames, email addresses, or telephone numbers; nor does it sell or rent the information it collects. Rather, the company uses the information solely to deliver customized advertising on DoubleClick Network sites. Nevertheless, enough users have found this particular trail of bread crumbs so unacceptable that DoubleClick was forced to provide a free method to disable its tracking mechanism. Ironically, this function--the key that locks up what many perceive as DoubleClick's evil cookie jar--is itself a cookie. If anything, the furor over DoubleClick demonstrates the fundamentally benign nature of cookies. The technology does not open the floodgates for rampant abuse of privacy, nor does it blast big security holes in users' systems. You are in far more peril when you hand your credit card to a waiter than when you accept a cookie from a respectable Web site, or for that matter give your credit card number to the site. As in any transaction, however, smart buyers should take every step to ensure that they're dealing with reputable sites. Many factors go into establishing trustworthiness, beginning with Web builders prominently displaying a policy statement outlining exactly how they use cookies in their sites. (TOP) Tip 11: From Host Help - When Size Does Matter: Kb, Mb, Gb, Help!Do the various terms hosting providers use confuse you? You are not alone! Many people find themselves confused and frustrated when trying to figure out what a host is actually offering them and whether or not they really need it. If HostA is offering 1,000 MB of bandwidth, HostB is offering 1 GB of bandwidth, and you are wondering which host is offering you more bandwidth, then this article is for you.
NOTE: Depending on who is doing the math: many people will replace the 1,024 number with an even 1,000. You will need to ask your host how they calculate it You may have seen these equations elsewhere but still not be sure what it really means. How many pages will fit into a byte? A single character usually utilizes the entire storage space of a byte. No web pages will fit into this amount of space. Luckily hosts offer quite a bit more space then this. The average web page on HostHelp utilizes around 10 kilobytes (10kb) of space, some less, some a little more. This means that we could fit about 100 of the HostHelp pages into a single megabyte of space. If you were to purchase 20 megabytes of space from a host then you could fit the equivalent of two thousand HostHelp pages into your web site! "So if that many pages will fit into 20 megabytes of space, why do so many people and hosts make it sound like I need more space?" Many sites do not need more then 10 or 20 megabytes of space. A web site like HostHelp certainly does not need that much space at all, yet some web sites will require more and here is why. If you carefully look at the HostHelp web pages you will notice that we only use two graphic images on this entire site. The rest is text only (this is great for our visitors, since the pages will load more quickly and the content can be viewed without distractions). When you view other web sites, you are sure to notice, many of them use more graphics and have other dynamic content on their sites. The average graphic utilizes between 5kb and 20kb of space alone. If a web site has many different graphics then it will need more space. You may have also noticed web sites that contain message forums. These forums generate web pages much faster and obviously require more space. Another reason you may need more web space is if you are offering software or other various products for your visitors to download. You would need to store these products within your web space and again, these items utilize more space. Figuring out how much web space you need, for an existing web site, is easy. You can simply check the space you are currently using and then evaluate how much you think the site will grow from there. If you have not begun building your web site yet, and do not have much experience in the area, it may be more difficult to decide how much space you will need. In this case, it is recommended that you start with around 10 to 30 megabytes of web space. This should give you more then enough room to begin developing your web site without costing you much at all. If your web site does in fact run out of space then you should be able to easily purchase more space from your current host. This is why it is important, when searching for a host, to make sure you find one that makes it easy to upgrade and does not charge extra fees for doing so, outside of the cost of the upgraded package of course. What about Bandwidth?HostHelp will more then likely have many articles that concentrate on the issues of bandwidth. This seems to be the 'hot topic' when it comes to hosting. For the sake of this article, we will only go into the fundamentals of bandwidth usage. Bandwidth is the amount of data that is transferred through the high speed lines your host is connected to. When you load a HostHelp web page (noting the average HostHelp page is 10kb) you are downloading 10kb of data. How this adds up is the same as we noted above when discussing web space. A 10kb web page can be loaded 102 times before utilizing a single megabyte of bandwidth. Note: Each file within a page is calculated also. So if you were to have a 10kb web page that consisted of three images (10kb each), then every time the page was visited, 40kb of bandwidth would be used. Ten kilobytes for the page and 30 kilobytes for the images. If designed correctly, a web site can be very successful and receive many visitors, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and still utilize very little bandwidth. The page you are reading now could be downloaded and viewed by two million ninety-seven thousand one hundred and fifty-two visitors before utilizing 2 gigabytes of bandwidth! Some hosts try to say that other hosts will not allow you to be successful if they limit your bandwidth. This is obviously not true. Your success is dependant on how you develop, promote, care for, and remain dedicated to the task at hand. If you care about the success of your web site, then you will care enough to educate yourself about what it is your web site needs. This includes finding a host that will provide those needs efficiently and honestly. The hosts that are currently promising you unlimited bandwidth are either not being honest with you, have many hidden restrictions they are hoping you will not notice, or simply are not educated themselves and are possibly risking their entire business on the hope that their clients will not utilize an enormous amount of bandwidth. With Bandwidth, it is equally simple to guesstimate how much you will need if you have an existing web site, by checking your current usage and evaluating it from there. For a first timer this is more difficult. Starting out with 2 gigabytes of bandwidth is usually more then enough to allow room to develop and grow. This is also included, at no extra charge, with the majority of packages most hosts offer. If the host is not offering a minimum of 2 gigabytes of bandwidth, you may want to shop around a bit more. Again, you will want to assure the host you choose leaves room for growth in case your site does end up requiring more bandwidth. Additionally, just as with space, if a site contains an enormous amount of images, message forums, or other various products for download this could cause your bandwidth needs to be higher. The Host I use, or am considering using offers unlimited (or limited) hits, transfers, or pages views. Is this same as bandwidth? When a host claims to offer a certain amount of hits, transfers, or page views, again they are showing a lack of education with their business or they are assuming you yourself are not educated enough to know what bandwidth is. A hit means someone has downloaded a file from your web site. A page view means someone has visited your web page, and a transfer is the same as a hit. The host is in fact referring to bandwidth when they make this offer. The flaw in this offer is that there is no way for the host to know what size each of your files will be. Therefore, there is no way for them to predict how many hits, transfers, or page views they will be able to offer you. It is recommended that you either avoid a host making these claims or question the host to confirm exactly how they calculate a hit, transfer, or page view in terms of bandwidth. Any web site that utilizes more then 15 gigabytes of bandwidth per month should be on what is called a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are servers that host only your site and do not share the resources with other sites. These are more expensive then community hosting but if you care about your site's success, and you are utilizing more then 15 gigabytes of bandwidth, then dedicated is the way to go. Tip 12: From NetMechanic™ Webmaster Tips Newsletter Promotion Tip: Ever receive a speeding ticket from a police officer in an unmarked car? You don't see them because they're designed to be nondescript and want to be overlooked. Many web sites accidentally hide themselves just as effectively from search engines and directories. Is yours one of them? The web is doubling in size every 9 months. That's a lot of new sites for search engines and directories to deal with - you have to stand out like a Ferrari to be successful. Before you can effectively promote your site to the search engines and directories, you must clearly understand their organizational structure, data collection methods, and content. What Is A Search Engine? A search engine is a searchable database of individual web pages whose goal is to include every site on the Web. Search engines use automated programs called spiders to crawl through the Web in search of web sites. Using proprietary guidelines, the spiders index and score pages based on the words and phrases used on the web pages. When users query the search engine about a specific topic, search engine returns a list of web sites that it considers the best match The top search engines in terms of traffic:
What Is A Directory? A directory is organized much like a library. Information is categorized into sections and you are directed to a particular category based on your search query. A human editor reviews and categorizes each site before including it in the directory. Since each site is reviewed first, directories often contain higher quality content than search engines. However, each site is generally reviewed once and never revisited, so directories can also contain a lot of outdated information - like last year's yellow pages. The top search directories in terms of traffic:
While the distinction between search engines used to be quite clear, the situation is more blurred now. Most search engines now also have a directory while most directories provide search engine results as their secondary results. Yahoo provides its directory results first, but users can also click on "Go to Web Page Matches" to see search engine results from Google (Yahoo formerly partnered with Inktomi). Similarly, Alta Vista provides search engine results first, but users can click on "Directories" to view the Alta Vista directory. Increase Your Search Engine Appeal A good search engine ranking requires careful page preparation and attention to coding details. Search engines are interested in your HTML tags, keywords, and links. Your carefully designed graphics, image maps, and JavaScript are irrelevant - except when they actually hurt your site ranking! Because every search engine uses different algorithms, no single strategy will appeal to all of them. However, you can take certain steps to maximize your site's appeal. At a minimum, your site should contain the following:
The TITLE and META tags go in the HEAD section of your document. The ALT tags are attached to images in the BODY section. The TITLE tag is the single most important tag on your site. Most browsers display the TITLE content in their title bar and use the TITLE content as the bookmark (or favorite in Explorer) title. Make the TITLE tag a meaningful description of your site and include as many keywords as possible. Although there are many different types of META tags, search engines only use the NAME attribute and it's DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS values. When you use the DESCRIPTION attribute, search engines will return the text in the CONTENT attribute as a description of your web site. Make it meaningful, attractive, and full of keywords! Not every search engine uses META tags to index sites, but enough do to make this simple technique worthwhile. For instance, the TITLE and META description tags for a baseball team might be: <HEAD>
<TITLE>River City Stars Official Site
</TITLE>
<META NAME = "description"
CONTENT = "River City Stars play great
AA minor league baseball in our new River
City stadium. Special children's
promotions at every home game!">
</HEAD>
Be careful with your META & TITLE tags and keyword use because too much repetition can cause a search engine to drop your site. Too few, and you may never get a good ranking. NetMechanic's PagePrimerTM tool can help you optimize your page and avoid simple mistakes that might cause you problems with search engines. You can even have a page analyzed for free. Directories Use A Human Touch Techniques to receive a high search engine rating will not work with a directory. While good content is necessary for search engines, both good content AND visual appeal are mandatory in directories. Unlike the automated search engine process, a human reviews each entry in a directory before it is included. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A keyword search will only look for matches in these descriptions, so be careful how you describe your site. Remember, manual review takes time! The typical time lag between submission of a site and its actual listing in Yahoo is five months. You can speed up the process at some directories, but expect to pay for that service. This trend will probably continue.
Unfortunately, there are no simple tips to use for directories because the process is so subjective. Unlike search engines, directory editors look for good content placed on attractive pages. When you submit to a directory, do it by hand and take your time. Don't Make Promotion An Afterthought Consider your search engine and directory strategies during design, not after your site is complete. It doesn't matter what your site is about - Siamese cats, Mexican vacations, conspiracy theories, or gardening - people have to be able to find it. That will only happen if you promote it effectively. Search engines and directory listings are your most important promotional tool. 85% of Internet users depend on search engines to locate web sites. Make sure they can find yours! (TOP) You can advertise with us locally and nationally! Email us and we will send you the information. Make Payment Online for Monthly Billing for Hosting Services or Design Services via your Visa or MasterCard. Once you receive your billing Email from us just come here and Click on the following Icon: |
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